Dominoes / Rules
How do you play All Fives? Rules, spinner and when to score less
All Fives is a draw game played with a double-six set. After every tile is placed, you add up the pips on the open ends of the layout; if the total is a multiple of five, the player who just played scores it on the spot. The first double played becomes a spinner that can be played on from all four sides, so there can be up to four ends to count. When someone goes out, or nobody can play, the winner also collects the pips left in the opponents' hands, rounded to the nearest five. In the rules John McLeod keeps at pagat.com, the game is usually played to 250 for two players and 200 for three or four.
That one change — scoring during play rather than only at the end — is what makes the game interesting. Every turn becomes a choice between taking points now and what you leave for the next player. Pagat's page calls it one of the best domino games because the strategy is complicated but play is fast.
A word on names
The names in this family are used loosely, and that causes arguments before the first tile. Pagat separates them: All Fives and Five Up have spinners, and are more common in the United States; Muggins and Sniff are, in pagat's account, more common in Britain and Europe, and in pagat's Muggins doubles are not spinners at all. Wikipedia's history of the game treats Muggins and All Fives as two names for the same thing, and notes the names had already blurred together by the 1870s. Neither is wrong. If someone says "Muggins", ask whether doubles spin.
The setup
Pagat's main rules deal 9 tiles each for two players, 7 each for three, 5 each for four, with the rest left face down as the boneyard. Sources disagree here more than anywhere else. A European source pagat cites deals 7, 5 and 5. Travis Newsome and Trevor Born's Play Dominoes Like a Champion deals 7 each for two, three or four players, which leaves no boneyard at four. Hand size matters: more tiles in hand means more choice every turn, and fewer tiles in the boneyard means less luck from drawing.
The first lead is decided by lot, and any tile can lead. After that, whoever went out leads the next hand; after a blocked hand, it goes back to lot.
On your turn you must play if you can. In pagat's main rules you may not draw while holding a playable tile. If you cannot play, you draw until you get a tile that fits or the boneyard is empty, and a drawn tile that fits is played at once. Some tables let you draw even when you could play, or leave the last one or two boneyard tiles undrawn — agree on it first.
How the count works
Doubles are placed crossways, and a double sitting at an open end counts both halves: [5-5] counts 10, [6-6] counts 12.
The spinner is the only part with special rules. In pagat's version:
- Only the first double played is the spinner — not necessarily the lead.
- The first two tiles played against it go on its two sides.
- Both halves of the spinner count until both sides are covered. Once the second side is covered, the spinner itself stops counting.
- Only then can tiles go on its two ends, opening a third and a fourth arm. Each arm's end then counts.
Here is a short sequence so you can see it:
| Play | Open ends | Total | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| [5-5] leads (spinner) | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| [5-0] on one side | 10 + 0 | 10 | 10 |
| [5-3] on the other side | 0 + 3 | 3 | 0 |
| [5-2] opens a third arm | 0 + 3 + 2 | 5 | 5 |
| [5-6] opens the fourth arm | 0 + 3 + 2 + 6 | 11 | 0 |
The highest score from one play, per pagat, is 35: three arms ending in [6-6], [5-5] and [4-4] (12 + 10 + 8 = 30) and a 5 on the fourth.
End of the hand
The hand ends when someone plays their last tile or nobody can play. If it blocks, the player or team with the fewest pips wins it. The winner scores the pips left in the opponents' hands, rounded to the nearest five: [1-2] counts as 5, [1-1] counts as 0, and a hand holding [6-4] and [2-1] — 13 pips — counts as 15. Pagat records a variant that subtracts each player's own leftover pips from their score instead, and its Muggins page uses that as the main rule. In a tied block, pagat's All Fives scores nothing in two- or four-player games; with three players, the two who tie split the third player's pips.
Many tables divide every score by five — a 15 becomes 3 — and play to 61 on a cribbage board. The game is the same; only the bookkeeping changes.
Calling your score
Many rule sets say you must announce your score as you play. If you forget and an opponent calls "Muggins!", the points are lost — and in some versions the opponent takes them. Wikipedia notes the rule does not appear in an American Hoyle of 1864 but does in a pocket Hoyle of 1868, and that not every modern rulebook includes it. Decide before you start whether you are playing it.
Why it rewards thinking more than block does
In a block or draw game scored only at the end, most turns have one job: get rid of tiles without getting stuck. In All Fives, every turn has two questions — what does this score? and what does it leave? — and the second one usually decides the hand. Pagat's strategy note puts it simply: the smaller the total you leave, the smaller the total the next player can make from it.
Example one: take 5, not 10
Two players, nine tiles each. Two tiles are down, [2-4] and [4-5], so the open ends are 2 and 5. You hold [2-5] and [3-5] among your eight tiles; you do not hold [0-5] or [5-5].
- Play [2-5] on the 2. The ends become 5 and 5: total 10. You score 10.
- Play [3-5] on the 5. The ends become 2 and 3: total 5. You score 5.
Now look at the reply. After [2-5], two tiles score for your opponent: [0-5] on either end makes 5, and [5-5] makes 10 + 5 = 15. After [3-5], no tile in the set scores. To make 5, a tile on the 2 would have to leave a 2 showing, and the only one that does is [2-2], which counts 4 as a double: 4 + 3 = 7. On the 3, the same problem: [3-3] makes 2 + 6 = 8.
Your opponent holds 8 of the 18 tiles you cannot see, so they hold any one of them with probability 8/18, about 44%. Before any drawing, the chance they can score off the 10-point play is about 71%, and the expected reply is worth about 8 points. So the 10-point play nets you about 2 on this exchange; the 5-point play nets you 5. That is only one move deep — but one move deep is where most points are lost.
Example two: two ten-point leads are not equal
Pagat's advice when you have the lead is to open with a tile worth ten, [5-5] or [4-6]. Both score 10. They are not the same play.
- After a [4-6] lead, the ends are 4 and 6. Only [1-6] scores in reply, making 4 + 1 = 5. Doubles do not help: [4-4] makes 14 and [6-6] makes 16.
- After a [5-5] lead, the double is the spinner, and both halves still count while one side is covered. [0-5] scores 10 + 0 = 10 in reply.
In two-player play your opponent holds 9 of the 19 tiles you cannot see, so each reply tile is a 47% chance. The [4-6] lead gives away about half as much on the next play. The [5-5] lead has its own argument — it sets up a four-armed layout early, which suits a hand rich in fives — but you should know what you are paying for it.
Example three: going out is not always the best result
Pagat also warns that being the one to go out is not always the same as getting the most points in the hand. If your opponent is down to [1-1] and [2-0], their leftover pips round to 5. A play that scores 15 on the way, even if it delays going out, can be worth three times as much as winning the hand. Late in a hand, count what the opponents are likely to be holding before you race to empty your hand.
All of this depends on counting. Each number appears on seven tiles, so knowing which are still unseen tells you whether an end is safe to leave. The odds behind that are in how much of dominoes is luck.
Related games
- Five Up makes every double a spinner, per pagat, so layouts sprawl and big scores come more often.
- Muggins in pagat's version has no spinners at all; the line has two ends and the most you can score in a play is 20.
- Fives and Threes, a British pub game, scores multiples of three as well as five, counting one point per five and per three — a total of 15 is worth 8. There is no drawing, and the game is played to exactly 61.
- All Threes uses multiples of three alone.
Which doubles spin, and whether they must go crossways at all, is compared game by game in do doubles have to be played crossways.
For how All Fives sits among block, draw and partnership games, see the overview of the main domino games, and for how its scoring compares with pip-count and one-point-per-hand systems, see how a domino game is scored.